MacBook Pro 15" - New internal Hard Drive?

After a full weekend of trying to clean install my MacBook Pro 15" from the spring of 2011, which had Mountain Lion installed, I have to conclude that reinstalling Mountain Lion or Lion really isn't an option at the moment...

I called Apple Support twice yesterday, thanks to them I got a lot further in reinstalling Snow Leopard from the DVD, (thanks Apple Support! ) but they think that my internal hard drive might be damaged, which causes the crashing of Mountain Lion and Lion when installing.

So, which internal hard drive should I install, can I take a bigger one (now 500 GB) than I had before, and can I also upgrade my processor?

It depends on who you believe. Personally I stay away from Seagate. I have had no issues with Western Digital and some of their drives are just under $99 for 750 GB. I would stick to those two major brands or if you can get a deal on a Toshiba Apple sometimes uses those as OEM drives.

If you really want to dream you may want to go to a SSD but the capacities are not that high yet and they are pricey. There is a company called Other World Computing that can give you more information. Currently SSDs at "reasonable" prices are around 256GB. I bought a new MacBook and paid a $500 upgrade for a 768 GB SSD but it is lightning fast and smooth as butter.

Installing a new HDD is not as simple as a mere switch with the old one. It must first be formatted so that it can be used in MBP and then there is a transfer of the data from the old internal one to the new one. To do this properly, you will also need an enclosure for the format and transfer processes.

When you install a new HDD that is larger than the original one, think about the ramifications it has on your backup strategy. A backup HDD should at the very least have the same capacity as the internal HDD, preferably larger.

As to what manufacturers you should look at, you will find that there are advocates for each brand as well as detractors. I have Seagate's. Toshiba's and Hitachi's in my inventory. All are still spinning with no casualties to date. I have an aphorism; You cannot have too much storage. If the budget allows, get the largest capacity you can install. Rpm speed is secondary.

It depends on who you believe. Personally I stay away from Seagate. I have had no issues with Western Digital and some of their drives are just under $99 for 750 GB. I would stick to those two major brands or if you can get a deal on a Toshiba Apple sometimes uses those as OEM drives.

The brand doesn't matter all that much. Each of those makers has had a major problem in the last 5 years or so that caused users to say "I'll never use ____ again." But whatever brand they then switched to had probably just had a different problem that drove away customers. Truth is, all hard drive companies have had their flaws and all fix them so you never know which one is the best or worst at any given time. The second truth is, there are only a few hard drive makers left, so if you write one off you'll eventually write them all off and have no choices.

You can only read the reviews to make sure the particular model you are buying (of any brand) has decent reviews, and take your chances. But what you will be taking chances on is a specific model, not an entire brand.

It is dependent upon how much data you want to keep on your internal HDD. Usually a 50% increase will give one adequate room to grow in. A 750 GB HDD will be fine. If you opt for a 7200 rpm model, it will enhance the performance of the MBP, but not by an astonishing amount.

A 6 TB backup is more than adequate. If the budget allows and if the data is important a redundant backup is a good strategy. I recently had a situation where that made all the difference. One may lose data on the internal HDD and find that the backup also has lost the data. Though rare, it can and does happen.

When it comes to install the HDD, have an enclosure ready.

Put the new HDD in the enclosure and clone the data from the internal HDD to the new one.

You can use Disk Utility>Restore or down load from the Internet Carbon Copy Cloner.

When the copy/transfer of data is complete, test the new HDD to see if it will boot the MBP.

My idea, since reinstalling Mountain Lion last weekend didn't really work, was to go to my store where I always go and have it all installed there, so buy the drive, have it installed over there and also have Mountain Lion installed there.

They know a lot more about it than I do, and I already spent a whole weekend trying to fix the sh*t so that I could continue work for my graphic design business, but I really wasted my time then

Anyway, I'll read your information again tomorrow so that I can check everything when they're having it installed this saturday, in order to avoid more trouble!

It is possible. I suggest that you have the technicians install the OS. That way all of your headaches will be taken care of. Installation of the OS will probably take an hour or so, so bring a sandwich.

Had my new 750 GB internal hard drive installed this morning at the computer store but they didn't have the time to install the OS X. So, I went home, partitioned the drive and tried installing. 3 failures and a few phone calls with Apple Support later, it finally works again!! Thanks for your help!

Now I have Lion installed, I only miss the Tasks and Notes applications there are in Mountain Lion, so I am considering reinstalling Mountain Lion too.

Is there a way I can have it installed but so that I can still go back to Lion if the installation has failed (now that everything finally seems to work fine )

First go to the APP store and see if both Lion and Mt Lion are in your account. If that is the case, then you can always install either when eve you wish. There several options that you can exercise to guarantee this.

1. Partition your internal HDD and install Mt. Lion on it (a small partition will do). In the event that you would want to use it, you would have to clone that partition on to a larger HDD then transfer your user data to the new HDD. Then you would have to install it into your MBP by a physical swap or clone it to your internal HDD.

2. Get an external HDD and install Mt. Lion on it. Same directions as above, but omitting the partition of the current HDD.

3. Make a USB thumb drive of Mt. Lion. This would allow you to install Mt. Lion over Lion on your internal HDD without any cloning or user data transfer. I have made USB thumb drives for both Lion and Mt. lion. This way you do not need an Internet connection to install the OS and always have an option to revert to either OS. I consider the best alternative.

Here are directions for creating the USB thumb drive (They also apply to Lion):

I like Time Machine and it is an excellent backup medium. With that said, I like redundant backups. In addition to Time Machine, another external HDD with all or the critical data is good to have for the simple reason that all HDDs will fail eventually. Some people like to clone the internal HDD which creates a bootable HDD if the internal HDD should fail. I don't do that because the USB thumb drives essentially perform the boot function, so I opt to just backup the important files.

I hope I have covered everything. If clarification is needed, don't be bashful. Just ask.

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